Codori Farm Walnut Battlefield Tree Inlay Ring

The Codori Farm is located just south of Gettysburg on the Emmitsburg Road.  It is a well-recognized landmark with its distinctive two-story brick farmhouse and the barn with multiple cupolas.  At the time of the Battle of Gettysburg, the 273-acre farm was owned by Nicolas Codori who emigrated from the region of Alsace, France in 1828.  Nicholas, a successful local butcher, lived on York Street in Gettysburg acquiring the farm to raise livestock for his business.  As fate would tell, the result of the fighting on July 1st, 1863, placed the farm between the two armies.  On day two of the battle many skirmishes occurred on the farm including what became known as the Battle of Codori Thicket where 262 men of the Minnesota Volunteer Infantry successfully defended a large gap in the Union line when over 1700 Alabama infantry made a surprise assault.  Their success came at an unimaginable cost with 215 casualties.
On day three, the farm was right in the middle of the ill-fated Confederate assault that became known as Pickett’s Charge, where, following an hours long artillery bombardment, approximately 12,000 Confederates advanced across a mile of open terrain, including the farm whose buildings were used by the Confederates as focal points for the Union center.  General Pickett himself was said to advance to and sustain a position by the Codori Farm barn.  As the Confederates advanced across the Emmitsburg Road Union infantry and artillery decimated the Confederates and the assault was repulsed.  It was estimated that over 500 Confederates lay dead on the farm, most of them were buried in shallow graves where they fell.  The Codori home and barn sustained major damage and all fences and crops were destroyed.
In the years that followed the battle, much of the farm was effectively unfarmable due to the number of graves.  It was not until 1873 that the fallen Confederates were removed from the farm and reinterred in the South.  Nicholas died in 1878 at the age of 69 due to a farming accident.  The farm then passed on to his son, Simon.  While the farm was still owned by the Codori family the 1880’s saw the farm begin the transition from agriculture to preservation as many plots of land were sold off for the placement of monuments.  Finally, in 1888, the farm passed from the Codori Family to the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association.  Later, the War Department managed the land beginning in 1895.  Ultimately, the National Park Service inherited the administration of what is known today as Gettysburg National Military Park whose mission is to preserve the land and interpret the Battle of Gettysburg including what happen on the Codori Farm in July of 1863.